A white tiger mauled to death a school student in a New Delhi zoo on Tuesday, an official and a witness said.
Television channels broadcast closed-circuit footage of the frightened boy inside the tiger’s enclosure in the zoo that houses six white tigers, along with lions and panthers.
“We are all in a complete state of shock,” said Amitabh Agnihotri, the director of the National Zoological Park in the Indian capital, adding that the body was being sent for a post-mortem examination.
“The boy seems to have leapt over the railing into the tiger enclosure. It was a white tiger that attacked,” New Delhi zoo manager Riaz Khan told a foreign news agency.
”We are trying to find out who this boy was and why he did what he did. The police are here and they are investigating.”
Authorities have yet to ascertain whether the student was alone or accompanied by friends.
“The barricade was too low and it seems the tiger grabbed the youth into his cage and firmly latched on to the youth’s neck,” an eyewitness who alerted the police told an Indian news channel.
“We tried to throw sticks and stones at the tiger but we could not save the youth,” he said, adding that the tiger killed him in less than 10 minutes.
In 2000 a tiger mauled a man in a zoo in the eastern state of West Bengal.
In 2011, India had 1,706 tigers, or more than half the world’s population of the endangered species.